Skipping the iPhone bandwagon … for now
Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 02:06pm
The release date for the iPhone 3G has passed, and I didn’t get one. Even though a couple of people I know lined up in the early morning to get one.
Do I still want one? Maybe.
As I had the day off work (using up annual leave before I lose it) I went up to the shops to have a look at one in person. It was nice.
So now the question comes back to money. How much do I want to pay and do I want to sign up to a contract? I am only on my second mobile phone and I bought that outright through eBay. I just hate the thought of a two year contract.
Of the three phone carriers, Optus has the best pricing and, by announcing their pricing well in advance of the release date, screwed people around the least. So that is who I am looking at.
Of their plans (including buying it outright from them) I’m leaning towards a 16GB iPhone on a $39 plan (just a plan, not a cap plan) for 12 months. The big draw for me is the 500MB of data and 18c per SMS message which is where I anticiate most of my usage to be.
So, do I sign a ‘raincheck contract’ with Optus that has a 10-21 day delivery time (who knows how realistic that is), or do I simply wait until the end of the month to see what actually happens with stock levels?
(I will be calling around some of the Optus resellers to see what they have to say)
Tagged with: iphone
I’m pretty sure you should get one Stephen :-) It not a cheap proposition to buy outright, which is what I was planning to do before the manager of the South Melbourne Optus World decided that of the 80 phones they had on launch day, 4 would be pre-paid and they were all 8Gb; There goes that plan. So instead I signed up for a 12 month contract. The phone repayments cost more for the shorter contract but its still less then buying outright. I can’t imagine I’d want to change phone in less than a year. The only thing I might want to change is the plan, you can go up a plan anytime and down a plan after 6 months, so its reasonable flexible as long as you stay with Optus, who are for all intents and purposes the only carrier worth considering as they are the only ones that seem to get what the iPhone is about: Data.
Wes - July 15th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Very wise decision. Let other people find the bugs and then buy the second generation.
Damien - July 18th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
The 3G is the second generation :)
But I’m not going to wait for very long. It is highly likely that I will be heading up to an Optus store tomorrow to sign up for a contract…
Stephen - July 18th, 2008 at 11:32 pm